C&RL News June 2020 266 N e w s f r o m t h e F i e l dDavid Free University of South Florida Libraries obtain Audubon Florida’s records The University of South Florida (USF) Librar- ies have obtained the records of Audubon Florida’s Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary. The donation means that USF Libraries is now the repository of the majority of the orga- nization’s records. Since their inception in 1900, Audubon Florida and its affiliates have led the way in environmental conservation and restoration in the state, and have been at the forefront of regulating game hunters, conserving land, and studying the relation of birds to Florida’s precious ecology. The organization formed during an acute envi- ronmental crisis, when plume hunters all but wiped out the state’s population of wading birds. The USF Libraries’ Audubon Florida re- cords include such gems as the daily game warden reports dating back to the 1920s, research notes of Robert Porter Allen con- cerning the whooping crane in the 1940s, as well as research materials, bird counts, and published reports and research. The acquisition of these materials rep- resents a new direction for USF Libraries Special Collections, which is actively col- lecting materials for environmental studies. The Audubon Florida collections are housed in the USF Tampa Library and are open to researchers. Portions of the collections are available in Digital Collections, and more will be digitized in future months. Read more about USF’s Florida environmental collections at http:// lib.usf.edu/fei/. ACRL sets 2020 legislative agenda Each year, the ACRL Government Relations Committee, in consultation with the ACRL Board of Directors and staff, formulates an ACRL Legislative Agenda. Drafted with input from key ACRL committees, ACRL leaders, and the ALA Public Policy and Advocacy Of- fice, the ACRL Legislative Agenda is priori- tized and focuses on issues at the national level affecting the welfare of academic and research libraries. The ACRL Board of Direc- tors recently approved the 2020 ACRL Leg- islative Agenda. The 2020 ACRL Legislative Agenda fo- cuses on four issues that the U.S. Congress has recently taken, or will most likely take, action on in the year ahead: federal funding for libraries, net neutrality, the Affordable College Textbook Act, and consumer data privacy. The agenda also includes a watch list of policy issues of great concern to academic librarians but where there is no pending leg- islation. Issues on the watch list are: public access to federally funded research, Federal Depository Library Program modernization Act, and deferred action for childhood arriv- als/immigration issues. CARLI statement on the importance of a director in charge of the academic library At its December 2019 meeting, the Consor- tium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI) Board of Directors discussed the issue that some members’ organizations are not filling the library director position when the incumbent leaves, for example, retires, or resigns. The college or university simply “assigns” the library to a campus ad- ministrator, like a vice-president or assistant provost, who may have many other respon- sibilities. Sometimes a mid-level library staff member is named as “in charge” without title or compensation change. The statement asserts that these assign- ments erode the effectiveness of the library in many ways, but that also dramatically dimin- ish the ability for the consortium to interact in a meaningful way with the library. As a result, services and programs that could be extended to faculty, staff, and students are never of- fered or promoted. The discussions led to the release of a statement articulating the impor- tance of having a dedicated, library-focused director, not just for continuity of service, but http://lib.usf.edu/fei/ June 2020 267 C&RL News ACRL 2021 keynote speakers announced ACRL announces its celebrated lineup of keynote speakers for the ACRL 2021 Con- ference, “Ascending Into an Open Future,” to be held April 14- 17, 2021, in Seattle. Be challenged and inspired by ACRL’s thought- provoking speakers, who also double as authors, researchers, educators, journalists, and data nerds. Opening Keynote, April 14, 2021 – Tressie McMillan Cottom, Author Tressie McMillan Cot- tom is an award-win- ning author, research- er, educator, and cul- tural critic, whose work has been rec- ognized nationally and internationally for the urgency and depth of her incisive critical analysis of technology, higher education, class, race, and gender. The foundation for Cottom’s first book, Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy, was formed by disserta- tion research for her doctorate from Emory University’s Laney Graduate School. In Lower Ed, she questions the fundamental narrative of American education policy. Carol Anderson calls Lower Ed, “nuanced, carefully argued, and engagingly written.” In 2019, she released Thick: and Other Essays. Thick was the winner of the Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize and was a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award. Cottom serves on dozens of academic and philanthropic boards and publishes widely on issues of inequality, work, higher education, and technology. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in race and digital soci- ology, as well as researches structural inequal- ity, schooling, and labor outcomes. She also co-hosts Hear to Slay with Roxane Gay, a podcast with an intersectional perspective on celebrity, culture, politics, art, life, love, and more. She will join the faculty of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Infor- mation and Library Science as an associate professor, effective July 1, 2020. Closing Keynote, April 17, 2021 – Mona Chalabi, Journal- ist Mona Chalabi is a journalist who re- ally loves numbers. She is the data edi- tor of The Guard- i a n , w h e re s h e writes articles, pro- duces documenta- ries, and illustrates, as well as animates, data. After analyzing statistics for the U n i t e d N a t i o n s , Chalabi saw how important data was, but also how easily it could be used by people with their own specific agendas. Since then, her work for organiza- tions like Transparency International and The Guardian has had one goal: to make sure as many people as possible can find and question the data they need to make informed decisions about their lives. Chalabi holds a master’s degree in Inter- national Security from the Paris Institute of Political Studies and has worked for FiveThir- tyEight, the Banks of England, the Economist Intelligence Unit, and the International Orga- nization for Migration. Additional details about the ACRL 2021 Conference are available on the conference website at https://conference.acrl.org/. https://conference.acrl.org/ C&RL News June 2020 268 The Engaged Library: High-Impact Educational Practices in Academic Libraries ACRL announces the publication of The En- gaged Library: High-Impact Educational Practices in Academic Libraries, edited by Joan D. Ruelle. High-impact educational practices—as identified by George Kuh and the Associa- tion of American Colleges & Universities—are widely recognized as activities that promote student engage- ment, student retention, and positive student learning outcomes. These practices take different forms depend- ing on institutional context and priorities, as well as the learners themselves, but are all meant to create substan- tive activities that deepen student learning, engage- ment, and success. Each chapter in T he Engaged Library addresses one of the ten original high-impact practices through the lens of library partnerships, con- tributions, and opportunities, and provides ideas for and examples of outcomes assess- ment. Across all of the chapters and case studies are examples of well-orchestrated and engaging models that rely on instructional teams of faculty, advisers, librarians, and tech- nology professionals to enhance and deepen the practices’ impact on student learning. The framework for The Engaged Library challenges academic libraries to plan, develop, and execute efforts to incorporate these practices intentionally, sys- tematically, and for greater engagement and impact. As high-impact practices become a leading measure of engaged pedagogy on college campuses, this volume can provide an entry point for academic librar- ians looking to lead, partner, and contribute to these practices on their campus. T he Engaged Librar y: High-Impact Educational Practices in Academic Librar- ies is available for purchase in print and as an ebook through the ALA Online Store, in print through Amazon.com, and by telephone or- der at (866) 746-7252 in the United States or (770) 442-8633 for international customers. also for leveraging interlibrary cooperation, and ensuring that the campus investment in the library is optimized by a representative who can advocate for innovation and service excellence. More information, including the text of the statement, is available at www. carli.illinois.edu/membership/directors. Arcadia grant supports publication of open access monographs at MIT Press The MIT Press has published its first open access (OA) monographs on the MIT Press Direct platform. Supported by a grant from the Arcadia Fund, a charitable fund of Lis- bet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, the project is part of a larger initiative to explore alter- natives to the traditional market-based busi- ness model for professional and scholarly works on specialized subjects. In 2019, the MIT Press received a three- year $850,000 grant from the Arcadia Fund to perform a broad-based monograph publish- ing cost analysis and to develop and openly disseminate a durable financial framework and business plan for OA monographs. As part of the project, the press will also un- dertake a pilot program to implement the resulting framework for scholarly front and backlist titles. At the conclusion of the Arcadia grant, the MIT Press will openly share a robust, blended OA model that the university press commu- http://www.carli.illinois.edu/membership/directors http://www.carli.illinois.edu/membership/directors June 2020 269 C&RL News Tech Bits . . . Brought to you by the ACRL ULS Technology in University Libraries Committee I recently began using Adobe Captivate, an e-learning authoring tool, to create interactive learning objects to train student employees. I like the diversity of interactive learning experiences I can create, such as branched storylines, mini courses, software simulations, video demonstrations, virtual tours with hot spots, and animated tutorials, all of which help keep the students engaged. In addition, Captivate remembers where students left off in their training so they do not have to rush through them and can revisit them at their leisure. Learn- ing objects can be integrated into a learning management system (LMS), but you will want to work with your LMS team to ensure everything is setup correctly. While a paid resource, Adobe offers educational licenses at reduced rates for those in academia. —Kimberly Auger Millersville University . . . Adobe Captivate https://www.adobe.com/products /captivate/education.html nity can adopt and adapt. MIT Press Direct is available at https://direct.mit.edu/books. Project MUSE announces MUSE in Focus: Contextualizing Pandemic Project MUSE has been working closely with participating nonprofit publishers who have graciously offered to make their scholarly content temporarily available for free on its platform during the COVID-19 pandemic. MUSE in Focus: Contextualizing Pandem- ic is a small sampling of temporarily free scholarship from Project MUSE publishers on the broad topic of pandemic and its ef- fects throughout history, in culture, and on humanity as a whole. More than 80 of MUSE’s participating pub- lishers have temporarily made all or some of their content freely available on the Project MUSE platform, in response to the crucial need for remote access to reliable, vetted teaching and research materials during the crisis. More than 25,000 books and 300 jour- nals are now available to any user worldwide, with no restrictions on access or usage. MUSE in Focus: Contextualizing Pandemic is available at https://about.muse.jhu.edu/ muse-in-focus/context-pandemic/. New ACRL Framework for Access Services Librarianship The ACRL Board of Directors approved a new Framework for Access Services Librari- anship at its 2020 spring virtual meeting. Consisting of four sections, the framework defines access services, suggests competen- cies for access services librarians and man- agers, examines marketing and outreach of access services, and suggests opportunities for professional engagement for access ser- vices librarians. The new framework is a culmination of a three-year effort by access services profes- sionals across the United States to define and describe a framework for access services librarianship. The ACRL Access Services Inter- est Group, established in July 2016, produced this work through a multistep process. The framework is of interest to academic librarians both inside and outside of access services as it intends to help shape, define, and explain the scope of this branch of librarianship as it continues to provide essential services and oversight of core library functions in 21st- century college or research libraries. The new Framework for Access Services Librarianship is available in the Standards, Guidelines, and Frameworks section of the ACRL website at www.ala.org/acrl/standards /alphabetical. https://www.adobe.com/products/captivate/education.html https://www.adobe.com/products/captivate/education.html https://direct.mit.edu/books https://about.muse.jhu.edu/muse-in-focus/context-pandemic/ https://about.muse.jhu.edu/muse-in-focus/context-pandemic/ http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/alphabetical http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/alphabetical